[Foundation-l] Privacy policy, statistics and rankings

[wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk]

Shane Simmons wrote:
>> The issue is the aggregation and collation of the data and making it
>> available to others. Why would you consider that some one's edit history
>> is any less personal than what they borrow from the library?
> 
> ...
> 
>> Why so? Editing history reveals your interests, maybe your politics,
>> perhaps your religious affiliations, your ethnicity. A whole range of
>> personal data can be mined from 1000s of edits. It may reveal
>> associations with other users, and networks of users. Those groupings
>> may then be traced into social networks like facebook, or linkin.
> 
> If you borrowed books from a library with the reasonable expectation of
> privacy, and such data was made public, I can see the issue.
> However, if you borrowed books from an open and public source, (
> bookcrossing.com comes to mind) which shows you, and everyone else, every
> book you've logged into the site, you really can't reasonably expect
> privacy.


Its not a question of expecting privacy its a question of requiring 
privacy. Did you see the proposed EU document and how it would impose 
liabilities on individuals that aggregate and disseminate personal data?

http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2009/wp163_en.pdf

At present adoption is delayed until next year as it appears that member 
states are looking to toughen up the rules and penalties:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/04/reding_data_protection/

and to coordinate legislation with the US:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/13/eu_data_protection_deal_us/